We are back from summer in Canada, including a three-week jaunt in September through the Rhineland and Alps with our constant globetrotting companions, Chantal’s cousin Chris and Chris’ husband Filiep. How they tolerated our presence in their home for that amount of time is beyond me. I am not easy to live with. Nor do I blame Chris for gritting her teeth whenever we drove past a road sign for nearby Oestrich-Winkel, and I shouted Ostrich Winkie! I’m a child. I admit it.
We are installed in our condo on the beach, blissfully away from the emotional blast radius of that vulgar and disgusting US election. Even San Clemente’s Trumpanzees, as dense as they often are, have somehow managed to read the room: nobody here wants to discuss the results. At all. End of sentence. Die if you try.
This being Ecuador, we have more imaginative problems to negotiate. Like eight hours a day, every day, with no electricity. Forget the narcoterrorists in our midst: that’s a problem for cities with deep water ports. Ecuador’s rotating nationwide blackouts affect everyone everywhere, equally. It’s all we talk about.
A Brief Backgrounder
In case you missed this news: Deforestation of the Amazon, one particularly nasty El Niño, and the first real stirrings of global heating produced this year what you might call an epic, kick-in-the-balls, reservoir drought. Add a baked-in culture of corruption, two healthy spoonsful of neglect, a pinch of political sabotage, and you have the ingredients for a serious, Cuba-style energy crisis. With sprinkles on top.
We are now rationing electricity. Our coastal region has no power between 08:00 and 10:00; 13:00 and 16:00; and 21:00 to midnight. Not bad, comparatively. Some communities are out for 14 hours. A few of the tinier Andean Quechua villages have no electricity, at all. Quito’s industrial sector is almost completely AWOL.
The Situation on the Ground
We landed at Manta at sunset on the tenth and drove to San Clemente in the lowering night with our friends Roger and Ramona, who met us at the airport. A few shacks along the roadway were lit with generator-powered sodium lamps. Many windows revealed winking and bobbing flashlights or, more precariously, candles. There were vague outlines of people everywhere on the blackened streets, especially in neighbouring Charapoto. We had to watch ourselves as we drove through at speed.
San Clemente was dark and there was nobody about. We went straight to Meier’s, a locally famous beach bar at the corner of our laneway, for cold beer and pizza. Torsten Meier, the German owner, had his generator going. The flag-festooned dining area was warmly lit. We received sincere welcomes from Torsten and his Ecuadorian staff. Torsten asked after our trip to his homeland. We ate and caught up with our friends. It was marvellous to be home.
The Problem
That was two weeks ago, and little has changed except for the outage schedule. I am busy assembling what I think is a credible battery backup system. My strategy is vastly confounded by the fact that there are no generators or portable power stations of any sort in Ecuador. These have all been scooped up, and distributors are reeling from the excess demand.
As I have explained to our Kingston-based downstairs neighbour in more than one text conversation, you can’t bring a generator with you on your flight. Airlines do not permit them – not even new in the box, not even in their cargo holds. A fresh, off-the-shelf generator may not have fuel in it, but it does have machine oil. Machine oil is flammable.
Nor do airlines allow lithium-ion power devices with more than 100Wh of oomph. These too are explosive. (Much like my chili.) If you cannot survive a daily blackout without the conveniences of a modem, lights, and working refrigerator – well, that is where abstract thinking has its evolutionary advantages.
The Plan
I give you Tiendamia. This inspired business initiative offers to Latin American shoppers the curated catalogues from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and, strangely, Macy’s. Tiendamia gathers its orders at a warehouse in Miami, prepares them for export to your Central and South American country of choice, and sends them off on the next cargo flight to that destination.
Ecuador has what it calls a 4×4 Category B merchandise import rule. That is, you can bring anything into this country, duty-free, so long as it weighs under 4 kg and costs less than $400, with an accrued maximum value of $1600 per year.
We do not have a postal system, but we do have an excellent courier service. Servientrega takes custody of the shipment, at either Quito or Guayaquil, and deposits it next morning safely on our doorstep.
As a test, because I inherently mistrust online shopping platforms, I ordered an EcoFlow RIVER 3 Portable Power Station. I placed my order one month before we were to return to Ecuador. We picked it up at Servientrega’s office in Charapoto the Monday after we landed. This ingenious little gadget now powers our modem, router, TV, sound bar, media streamer, and Blu-ray player. It switches to emergency power supply in 20 milliseconds. We don’t even notice.
I am suitably impressed. I have another EcoFlow RIVER on order with Tiendamia to run fans and lights in our bedroom. Maybe also the television, though TVs consume an inordinate amount of electricity. Best to watch on a fully charged laptop, on WiFi, which draws only 13W of power through the modem and router.
Great, But What About the Fridge?
Neither RIVER puts out enough sizzle to keep a large appliance humming. Through a Facebook page called Alternative Electrical Power in Ecuador, I sourced a company in Quito, Helios Strategia Ecuador, that sells whole-home battery backup solutions. A rep at Helios explained to me via WhatsApp that they were currently exhausted but would import the larger EcoFlow devices weekly, starting mid-November. I immediately transferred a 20% deposit to get my name on their waiting list. Earlier this week, Helios informed me that my DELTA 2 would arrive at customs on November 25 and ship to Manta for pickup on or around the 29th. Just in time for Christmas, to power my kitchen.
Together with our propane stove and a new 210L emergency water reserve, which I fill with condensation from our living room air conditioner, I have a tasty little off-grid package that will keep us going for a day or two without electricity.
I doubt it will come to that. But this is Ecuador. Never speak in absolutes.
We are back from summer in Canada, including a three-week jaunt in September through the Rhineland and Alps with our constant globetrotting companions, Chantal’s cousin Chris and Chris’ husband Filiep. How they tolerated our presence in their home for that amount of time is beyond me. I am not easy to live with. Nor do I blame Chris for gritting her teeth whenever we drove past a road sign for nearby Oestrich-Winkel, and I shouted Ostrich Winkie! I’m a child. I admit it.
We are installed in our condo on the beach, blissfully away from the emotional blast radius of that vulgar and disgusting US election. Even San Clemente’s Trumpanzees, as dense as they often are, have somehow managed to read the room: nobody here wants to discuss the results. At all. End of sentence. Die if you try.
This being Ecuador, we have more imaginative problems to negotiate. Like eight hours a day, every day, with no electricity. Forget the narcoterrorists in our midst: that’s a problem for cities with deep water ports. Ecuador’s rotating nationwide blackouts affect everyone everywhere, equally. It’s all we talk about.
A Brief Backgrounder
In case you missed this news: Deforestation of the Amazon, one particularly nasty El Niño, and the first real stirrings of global heating produced this year what you might call an epic, kick-in-the-balls, reservoir drought. Add a baked-in culture of corruption, two healthy spoonsful of neglect, a pinch of political sabotage, and you have the ingredients for a serious, Cuba-style energy crisis. With sprinkles on top.
We are now rationing electricity. Our coastal region has no power between 08:00 and 10:00; 13:00 and 16:00; and 21:00 to midnight. Not bad, comparatively. Some communities are out for 14 hours. A few of the tinier Andean Quechua villages have no electricity, at all. Quito’s industrial sector is almost completely AWOL.
The Situation on the Ground
We landed at Manta at sunset on the tenth and drove to San Clemente in the lowering night with our friends Roger and Ramona, who met us at the airport. A few shacks along the roadway were lit with generator-powered sodium lamps. Many windows revealed winking and bobbing flashlights or, more precariously, candles. There were vague outlines of people everywhere on the blackened streets, especially in neighbouring Charapoto. We had to watch ourselves as we drove through at speed.
San Clemente was dark and there was nobody about. We went straight to Meier’s, a locally famous beach bar at the corner of our laneway, for cold beer and pizza. Torsten Meier, the German owner, had his generator going. The flag-festooned dining area was warmly lit. We received sincere welcomes from Torsten and his Ecuadorian staff. Torsten asked after our trip to his homeland. We ate and caught up with our friends. It was marvellous to be home.
The Problem
That was two weeks ago, and little has changed except for the outage schedule. I am busy assembling what I think is a credible battery backup system. My strategy is vastly confounded by the fact that there are no generators or portable power stations of any sort in Ecuador. These have all been scooped up, and distributors are reeling from the excess demand.
As I have explained to our Kingston-based downstairs neighbour in more than one text conversation, you can’t bring a generator with you on your flight. Airlines do not permit them – not even new in the box, not even in their cargo holds. A fresh, off-the-shelf generator may not have fuel in it, but it does have machine oil. Machine oil is flammable.
Nor do airlines allow lithium-ion power devices with more than 100Wh of oomph. These too are explosive. (Much like my chili.) If you cannot survive a daily blackout without the conveniences of a modem, lights, and working refrigerator – well, that is where abstract thinking has its evolutionary advantages.
The Plan
I give you Tiendamia. This inspired business initiative offers to Latin American shoppers the curated catalogues from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and, strangely, Macy’s. Tiendamia gathers its orders at a warehouse in Miami, prepares them for export to your Central and South American country of choice, and sends them off on the next cargo flight to that destination.
Ecuador has what it calls a 4×4 Category B merchandise import rule. That is, you can bring anything into this country, duty-free, so long as it weighs under 4 kg and costs less than $400, with an accrued maximum value of $1600 per year.
We do not have a postal system, but we do have an excellent courier service. Servientrega takes custody of the shipment, at either Quito or Guayaquil, and deposits it next morning safely on our doorstep.
As a test, because I inherently mistrust online shopping platforms, I ordered an EcoFlow RIVER 3 Portable Power Station. I placed my order one month before we were to return to Ecuador. We picked it up at Servientrega’s office in Charapoto the Monday after we landed. This ingenious little gadget now powers our modem, router, TV, sound bar, media streamer, and Blu-ray player. It switches to emergency power supply in 20 milliseconds. We don’t even notice.
I am suitably impressed. I have another EcoFlow RIVER on order with Tiendamia to run fans and lights in our bedroom. Maybe also the television, though TVs consume an inordinate amount of electricity. Best to watch on a fully charged laptop, on WiFi, which draws only 13W of power through the modem and router.
Great, But What About the Fridge?
Neither RIVER puts out enough sizzle to keep a large appliance humming. Through a Facebook page called Alternative Electrical Power in Ecuador, I sourced a company in Quito, Helios Strategia Ecuador, that sells whole-home battery backup solutions. A rep at Helios explained to me via WhatsApp that they were currently exhausted but would import the larger EcoFlow devices weekly, starting mid-November. I immediately transferred a 20% deposit to get my name on their waiting list. Earlier this week, Helios informed me that my DELTA 2 would arrive at customs on November 25 and ship to Manta for pickup on or around the 29th. Just in time for Christmas, to power my kitchen.
Together with our propane stove and a new 210L emergency water reserve, which I fill with condensation from our living room air conditioner, I have a tasty little off-grid package that will keep us going for a day or two without electricity.
I doubt it will come to that. But this is Ecuador. Never speak in absolutes.
